Weeks of simmering tension between workers and administrators boiled over during a City Council budget session when union workers accused the city of illegally trying to weaken the city's unionized work force.

Armed with their own attorney, workers from the Service Employees International Union confronted city administrators during the third offive City Council hearings to review the 2000 budget.

"How far can you delete before you don't get any services?" asked SEIU President James Smith, who appeared with about 20 city workers. "Next you'll be telling us we need to privatize because we don't have the people anymore."

"I understand the concerns," said city business administrator Dennis Reichard. "But we are not laying people off. Positions are being deleted, but we are not laying bodies off."

Cunningham's proposed $38.2 million budget actually increases the city work force from 642 to 646 employees. But union officials are upset because the budget eliminates several union positions while adding similar nonunion positions from the tax office to the janitorial staff.

Union workers say the practice is a clear violation of the four-year contract they signed last year.

"The city cannot transfer work out of this unit," said Quintes Tagioli, the union's Allentown attorney. "It's an unfair labor practice. If the city continues to transfer these jobs, the union will do what it has to to stop it."

Reichard explained the union jobs being eliminated are vacant positions that in some cases were never bid on by any union workers. The new positions, he said, qualify as management personnel jobs that fall outside of the bargaining unit.